RM1 Battle Balance

[Wavelength]

I've loved reading Karr's recent reviews of RM1 games, and in doing so I've noticed something common across pretty much every single review: the battles were always either cakewalks or impossibly hard.

I remember when I was making my own game - well, trying to make my own game - for RM1, I found myself walking a very thin line between losing over half the battles and steamrolling over monsters without blinking. Even when I kept stats and level within very tight ranges.

I remember the so-called "35 point" system but I also remember it not perfectly accounting for the extreme mechanics running under the DBS' hood in RM1. So, just was curious: did anyone ever kind of strike the perfect balance or figure out a coherent solution for balancing RM1's battles and bosses? Aside from a complete CBS, are there any games out there that strike the really good balance in battle between exciting and fair?

[Novalis]

Re: RM1 Battle Balance

I've never seen a perfect balance in RPGM1 - at least not in terms of long-term play. Reasonably good uses of the battle system tend to err on the cakewalk side but can still be fun, particularly with a little innovation here and there. I think the system(s) in my demo are pretty decent. *ahem*

[Karr Lord of Chaos]

Re: RM1 Battle Balance

back in 2009 i made an article on this which is located here.
i will fill in a few of the other things ive noticed since them.

-starting your team off at a higher level to reduce the brokenness of early levels could be a good option. ive played one game which i think was rones that started you off level 22 or something. it was done as a plot device but the balancing of the battles was great at that point as every level required the same exp.

-battles have to be limited as the in game monster appearance rate is extremely broken. even setting monster exp to 1, the game throws so many monsters at you at once and does so every few steps, that its just impossible to balance using the premade appearance rate at lower levels. this is why i opted to do a custom battle system to allow the player the flexibility to explore the world and control the amount of exp and monsters. the biggest step in balancing is controlling every aspect of it.

-giving your players reasonable stats at level up and keeping them low is by far easier to balance then having them massively rise at each level. the 35 point rule is a good system to use though i replace the luck stat with an up to 99 rule for that one given that it controls status effects and is a low %. every game ive seen that gives mountains of stats ends up becoming overdone and i soon outpace everything. i opted to go for a higher base hp and more hp per level to give my game a more ff feel but i am now regretting it as it makes battles very difficult to balance and doesnt work well with the limitations of hp using spells. less is more with this maker and ive seen some fantastic stuff done with a cap of under 1000 hp.

-balance your equipment! this is often overlooked and can easily become game breaking. weapons can add too much attack power or too little and neither scenario is good. ive had special weapons that ended up doing massive damage to bosses yet nothing else in my arsenal could compare. by the same token ive battled bosses and done so little damage even with end game equipment that i was scared to think what would of happened had i not found the legendary overpowered stuff. equipment has to gradually rise and be reasonable. small stat bonuses are good for balancing but you have to be mindful of the formulae that rpg maker uses. if adding an armor is going to barely give you an extra point of resistance then its probably not worth making. there is a great balancing guide for armor which has mysteriously disappeared so ill post it after this post. it breaks it the formulae and gives me a rough idea of what i should shoot for when making equipment.

-choose how you are going to handle the two weapon slots. by adding a second weapon you can instantly do double damage to anything. this can completely break the game and even creating monsters to account for this could end up a mess if the player misses or cant afford to buy a second weapon. use curse items, use the disable system to kill one of the arms, make travelling with a shield to be extremely important. just make sure you plan for consequences for this. most players will equip the second sword if given the choice just so battles move faster. whatever your plan of attack is for this make sure its consistent throughout the game. dont let your player breeze through the game with a second sword then make the final battle so hard that they have to backtrack to get a shield!

-balance your magic and skills! this is perhaps the most difficult to do of all as magic cant level up. some spells will end up obsolete by the end of the game. its important to give the player magic thats effective yet not so overpowered that it can destroy villages. id suggest giving mage types spells that do moderate damage and give them plenty of mana and mana recovering items. very often in games ive ended up with a mage that conserves magic for the boss fight and either does nothing each turn or attacks with its horribly underpowered weapon.

-be very mindful of the gap between party members. if you have a fighter with very high equipment value and a mage at very weak equipment value then you are going to hit a point where monsters cant touch the fighter but will decimate the mage. keep this gap short and design monsters to be in the middle.

-a big folly of most games is the lack of starting supplies. so often i start out a game naked, without items, or money. the first dongeon often destroys me like ff1 did. every modern game gives you a starting salary, initial equipment, and a few healing items to allow you a point to build up your wealth. though this doesnt help with the overall scheme of balancing it helps with that first dongeon of battles which is where most games go wrong. the smoother that first ride is, the better the game will be. as an interesting caveat i will say that how people proceed with battles for the game will depend on that first encounter. if you want the player to adopt a strategy then you need to set the standard right there. give the player everything they need so they can make that choice fairly.

-if your dongeon is very long then plan to have a new set of monsters appear halfway through so the dongeon remains a challenge. make sure they are integrated slowly and not there just for kicks.

-the most important of all is play test, play test, play test. you will find things every time you play test even if you think you have found them all. you could think yourself the best rpg maker designer on the planet and yet you will find a mistake which will humble you. a massive majority of games could of been at the least bearable had the creator taken the time to play through the game once. you will catch so many basic mistakes (take overs, faulty switches, move location errors) that its an absolute necessity. i know i am guilty of this but play testing also means battling for yourself and not skipping them! if you cant last through your battles then how is anyone going to either? you know where everything is, other players do not. you know what monsters have weaknesses, you know how long a dongeon is, you know when you should heal and what levels you need to proceed. the player is blind to all this! make your game reflect the middle ground. make it possible to beat enemies with less levels and equipment. produce extra healing and save points.


i think between the two guides ive covered a great deal.

[ErikaFuzzbottom]

Re: RM1 Battle Balance

though i replace the luck stat with an up to 99 rule for that one given that it controls status effects and is a low %.

M DEF, not luck.

[Karr Lord of Chaos]

Re: RM1 Battle Balance

right, m def. i keep calling it luck for some reason.

[orius]

Re: RM1 Battle Balance

I remember the so-called "35 point" system but I also remember it not perfectly accounting for the extreme mechanics running under the DBS' hood in RM1. So, just was curious: did anyone ever kind of strike the perfect balance or figure out a coherent solution for balancing RM1's battles and bosses? Aside from a complete CBS, are there any games out there that strike the really good balance in battle between exciting and fair?

I generally stick with the 35 point system because it works okay, and it's better than trying to balance everything from scratch. Balance really does require lots of playtesting to make sure things more or less work the way one intends. I'm not good enough at scripting to do a CBS, but I try to keep things more or less balanced, and give the player a decent amount of options as well. There's also the more recent info Draygone found on how the M DEF stat works. Basically, each point in M DEF IIRC adds a 0.01% chance to resist a status. Taking, the 35 point rule into account, I would say that a game designer should multiply the number given to M DEF by about 10 to balance that out.

As for balancing equipment, I have generally followed the advice of that article Karr mentioned. Here's my attempt to make an equipment system based on those numbers:

http://www.pavilionboards.com/forum/...ad.php?t=22358

It also takes that second weapon slot into account. I tried to make shields count for enough defense so that a player needs to make an actual decision about dual wielding, or adding protection. I've never liked the whole cursed item solution.

Magic can be tricky to do, since the damage remains flat, and isn't affected by ability scores. It also depends on how much you want a character to depend on magic for attacking. A dedicated mage should have relatively cheap spells that do damage similar to what the main fighter do with the weapons. That's also related to supplies, you want to make sure that if MP is used a lot, the player can buy items that can recover MP yet not spend most of the party's gold. Or if healing spells are going to be expensive, healing items need to be cheap enough to ensure survival.

I think all the party members should be equally useful. It sucks to have 4 members, yet only 1 or 2 can damage the enemies reliably, while the others do little damage at all. This also goes for balancing equipment and stats, it's not good if one of those weak characters has crap armor and constantly needs to be healed either, no one wants a load (or a player might just decide to leave that character dead).

One thing I do when designing, and I mentioned this a while back, is create a character in the last slot named "Average Joe". It has a 5 in every stat (going by the 35 rule), and I don't restrict equipment on it. I use it for testing out monsters and stuff to see how well everything works. The character naturally isn't in the game anywhere, but it's still useful for testing out the balance.